9-3-01, Sunday Journal, 659 words
THE JONESES ARE DEAD
By Dalton Roberts
IPS Features
You
no longer have to try to keep up with the Joneses. They've died of exhaustion.
God
bless Joe Dominquez for introducing me to the concept of "enoughness."
I ordered his tapes titled "Your Money or Your Life," and they made me
realize how hypnotized I had been in robotically going after more money, more of
this and more of that rather than deciding what made me happy and being content
when I found it.
Joe
was a brilliant man who had a knack for playing the stock market. He became a
very wealthy man by the time he was 30. He found wealth to be unsatisfying and
decided to spend the rest of his life teaching people how to make enough money
to retire so they could do what they wanted to do the rest of their lives.
His
rest-of-his-life satisfaction was helping others. He thought we are all designed
so that we never can be happy unless we are doing something to uplift others.
At
the time I started listening to Joe's tapes, I was making enough to afford a
Cadillac and a home twice the size I was living in. As I examined my heart and
deeper desires while listening to him, I realized that a big car and home meant
little to me. I had enough.
I
started easing down into a lifestyle of comfort and fulfillment rather than a
superfluity of goods and gadgets with constant striving. It's so good to have
the feeling, "I have enough. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I have no
need to show off. I love being a simple person with simple needs. Thank God for
enough and being satisfied with it."
Joe
died but Vicki Robin carries on his work. You can reach her at
www.thenewroadmap.org. The book and tape series, "Your Money or Your
Life," is still available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the New Road Map
Foundation website.
In 1991 I put some notes in my journal about the
Gallup Poll book, "The People's Religion." One thing that really
jumped out at me was that 1 out of 3 people reported having had some kind of
mystical or profound spiritual experience.
I never was successful at grafting other people's beliefs into my consciousness.
And some of my own experiences didn't fit the patterns they tried to impose on
me.
From
my earliest years I had a sense of the presence of a spiritual realm. Sometimes
it was so real that mundane reality felt artificial and the spiritual dimension
felt like the only true reality. It took me many years to find people to talk to
about it because there were always a lot of people in my life who only accepted
you when you fit their beliefs and patterns.
What
a relief to start finding people who had similar life experiences. I now see
that many of us are mystics. We choose to use our own spiritual sensory natures
to arrive at what is meaningful.
I
must also admit I have come across some people who say they have never had such
experiences. I feel no impulsion to "convert" them. I am happy to
share my thoughts and experiences but remain at all times fully aware the world
is chiefly occupied by other people. Everyone is entitled to seek and follow
their own path. We all seek meaning and fulfillment in our own ways.
But
it does feel good to realize I have some company along the way. So many fellow
mystics have shared their flashes, insights and life-changing experiences with
me and just the process of sharing helps me to see what psychologist William
James called "the varieties of religious experience."
Joy
to you on your journey. May your antenna reach out and pick up every channel of
truth that holds exactly what you need along your pathway.
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